by Glen Craney
Salutations to the Blackened Douglas,
Your abode now matches your name. Should you wish to thank me in person for the alteration, I am accepting visitors at Berwick on the Tweed.
Yours truly, Sir Robert Neville
LASHING HIS FROTHING HORSE INTO Berwick, James rode behind the siege moat surrounding the city and called his Scot fighters to him.
Sim Ledhouse, who had been placed in command of the encirclement operation, tried to draw him back to safety behind the lines. “Can you not find another fight of your own, Jamie?”
In a wrathful state, James high-stepped his steed below the walls, giving no care to the range of the English arrows. “Who is Robert Neville?”
“The Peacock?” Ledhouse asked. “How did you know he was here?”
“Damn you! Answer me!”
“A knight from Durham with a mouth that exceeds his stature. What’s gotten your hackles up?”
“McClurg and McKie?”
“On the lines near the beachhead.”
James raced down the moat trench toward the coast, nearly trampling several of his own men in his path. He found the two Trinity brothers stationed behind the barricades. “Up with you, lads!”
Baffled by his cryptic summons, the Galloway brothers mounted their ponies and followed him in a sortie around the walls.
James shouted at the defenders on the ramparts, “Bring me Neville!”
“He dines this hour!” a sergeant said. “Call back tomorrow!”
Not recognizing him without his banner, the garrison shouted catcalls at him, convinced that he was a raw recruit too eager for his first fight.
After studying the window in that section of the tower where he remembered the officers used to take their meals, James returned to the trenches and circled the trebuchet that Ledhouse had constructed, the only stone thrower possessed by the Scots. He had never been an advocate of siege guns, deeming them too unwieldy for his slash-and-run tactics, but on this occasion the contraption might serve his purpose. “Sim, can you aim this thing with any accuracy?”
Ledhouse grinned. “I can hit the lip marks on Caernervon’s ass.”
James nodded him to the task. “Third window.”
Ledhouse ordered beams wedged under the running ramps to increase the trebuchet’s leverage. When the gun was angled to his satisfaction, James slashed the restraining rope. The stone crashed through the tower’s aperture and drew a stream of invectives inside.
Moments later, Neville appeared on the ramparts with a brown soup stain marring his robin-blue satin blouse. “A plague upon the knave who—”
“At the river!” James shouted. “Within the hour!”
Richmond arrived on the walls a step behind Neville. Recognizing the hero of Bannockburn, the English commander crouched behind a merlon thrust, leaving Neville exposed.
Neville laughed at the officers cowering around him. “Who is that piss ant down there?”
“The Scotsman you’re hunting.”
“That black root stump has been terrorizing you?”
“You can easily take him,” Richmond assured Neville, turning to silently warn his officers against countermanding the prediction.
Grinning at the chance to add to his reputation, Neville shouted down at his challenger, “Thirty men each.”
“Three! And bring along those bastards your mother calls your brothers!”
Liking those odds even more, Neville dug a slither of meat from his teeth and spat it. “Between the river and the west tower. I hear that’s where they threw your whore. You can join her after I carve you up.”
James and the Trinity brothers rode into the open field and waited.
A HALF HOUR LATER, NEVILLE, attired in a fancied breastplate of hammered silver, emerged from the gate on a sleek Flanders charger jingling with bells. Accompanied by his two brothers, the Peacock paraded back and forth under the walls as if entering a tournament. The soldiers in both camps lowered their weapons in a temporary truce to watch the encounter.
After enduring Neville’s flashy antics for several minutes, McKie turned to James. “Are you going to tell us what this is about?”
James delayed answering him until the Peacock reared his courser again, trying to taunt a charge. Then, he looked directly at the two Galloway lads who had shared his every hardship since the Turnberry invasion. “These Englishmen before us murdered your brother at Lintalee.”
The Trinity brothers, turning ashen with anger, drew their swords.
As they watched the Peacock strut and bark insults, James whispered, “The order I am about to give you, lads, I would not obey it if I were in your stead.” His only indication that the brothers were listening was the whitening of their knuckles as they gripped their weapons. “The first-born Neville is a menace. I will deal with him. But his kinsmen must be taken alive.”
McKie and McClurg said nothing, but kept their gazes fixed on the prancing Nevilles. Despite their lust for revenge, James knew they understood the realm’s need of such high-ranking prisoners for ransoming comrades who still languished in Caernervon’s dungeons. Still, he felt the same knot in his gut he had suffered on the day Clifford had dragged his father to the Tower. A Scot denied blood justice was never again a whole man. He offered them the only words of consolation he could summon. “Murdoch was like a son to me. There’s none in this world I’d rather have at my side than the two of you. When I charge the Peacock, circle behind his brothers and cut off their escape.”
The Peacock, unable to hear what James had whispered, threw up his hands in exasperation. “I dine at six, blackbird! Dally much longer and I’ll hang another ten of you!”
James inched his horse forward. “You and me.”
The Peacock gave up a confused half-laugh. “First you said three. Now one? I’m beginning to think you don’t want to fight at all.”
James reached into his saddlebag and removed the placard that Neville had hung from Murdoch’s neck. He threw it at the hooves of the Englishman’s horse and, in a ploy to shame him into the single duel, shouted his reply loud enough for the English defenders on the walls to hear. “The invitation was for me alone! If this tourney shill you have sent out is not up to it, I will allow you to send another more seasoned knight in his stead!”
The Peacock glanced up at Richmond. The officer, watching from the tower, eagerly nodded him to action. After debating the proposed change, Neville forced another laugh and taunted James, “Are you going to sit there and prattle on until darkness gives you an excuse to retire?”
James tossed his sword to McKie. He pulled the Dun Eadainn ax from behind his back and rested it on his pommel. The Peacock lost his preening grin. On the ramparts, Richmond and his soldiers murmured with anticipation. They had seen the effectiveness of that weapon at Bannockburn.
The Peacock retreated a step and whispered to his brothers.
James spurred to the charge.
The Peacock came at him—with his brothers joining in the assault. James had expected the treachery. He glanced over his shoulder and shook his head at McKie and McClurg to enforce his order not to come to his aid. Nearing the collision, he veered left of the onrushing brothers and caused the Peacock sweep past him, too late in altering his aim. He hammered the youngest Neville from his horse.
Stunned by the maneuver, the second Neville brother retreated for the gate, but the Trinity lads had circled around to block his retreat.
The Peacock reined his horse back into a tight turn.
“You’ve lost your escort!” James shouted at him.
The Peacock came on again with a fury. James calmed his steed, waiting without a jerk of movement. When the Peacock was within three lengths, he hurled his ax at the forelegs of the charger. The ponderous animal crumpled, whipping its rider over its neck. Thrown to the grass, the Peacock dragged himself up from the tangled stirrups to avoid being crushed.
James dismounted and stood over him. “Your feathers are ruffled.”
The
Peacock tried to crawl to his feet. James doubled him over again with a kick to the groin. The Englishman lunged at him with his dagger drawn.
James was caught unarmed—his ax lay several paces from his reach.
The Peacock laughed at his turn of good fortune. “Did you know my father served with Clifford?”
James eyed the ax. “I’m told swine run in pairs.”
The Peacock angled between James and the weapon. “He was there when they dragged your old man to the Tower.”
James ripped off his padded shirt and wrapped it around his forearm.
The Peacock stalked him. “When that Scot felon that spawned you fell from exhaustion, they tied him to a mule’s tail.”
“The man you hung was the brother of those lads behind you.”
The Peacock swung his dagger at James’s face, narrowing missing his mark. “Remind me to say a Mass for his pagan soul.”
James parried his wild thrusts. “Take a last look at your brothers. I’m going to ransom them for so much coin, your family will be rendered penurious.”
Neville bared his teeth in a snarling grin. “I’m told that caged bitch of yours also had a wagging tongue.”
James lowered his arm to offer an inviting target. “I’m going to make certain your name is never uttered without mine.”
The Englishman swung at his ribs and missed.
James lunged at his neck. “Speak my name!”
Trapped in the chokehold, Neville crumpled to his knees. “Black!”
“My name!”
The blood drained from Neville’s distended face. “Douglas!”
“I am a lord!”
Heaving for breath, Neville croaked, “Sir …”
James twisted the knave’s neck to the limit.
“James!”
“Now the bonnie finish!”
“Douglas!”
James threw him to the ground and retrieved the ax.
Neville crawled away clutching his throat. He looked up from his hands and knees to shout a curse—and heard a swish of air.
“When you arrive in Hell, commend that name to Longshanks!”
The Peacock’s plumed helmet rolled down the river’s embankment—with his head still inside.
XXXIV
JAMES FORDED THE RIVER ISLA near Perth and found the royal cavalry guarding the approach to the ruins of an old Roman camp. Exhausted and battered from their recent rough crossing of the Irish Sea, Keith the Marishal and his dejected troopers sat around the abbey grounds with their heads hung low. James made an attempt at joviality to stir them from their morose slumber. “Did I make a wrong turn into Northumbria? If not for your rabbit-spooking face, Keith, I could have sworn I’d interrupted an English burial party!”
Keith, gaunt and pale, was in no mood for banter. “Why don’t you go back to the Borders, Douglas. We’ve no need of you here.”
“Where is he?”
Keith winced to his feet and stood with arms akimbo in front of the abbot’s quarters. “The king has given orders. No one sees him.”
“Bishop Lamberton?”
“Gone to St. Andrews to take care of his own damn business.”
Alarmed at their low morale, James now understood why Lamberton had so hastily summoned him north. Robert, although coldly unmoved by the death of his daughter Marjorie in childbirth two years ago, had become so distraught over his disastrous Irish campaign that he had sequestered himself for weeks in this isolated Cistercian monastery at Couper Angus. This most recent of the king’s increasingly frequent spirals into the black abyss of melancholy had come at an inopportune time. After five years of siege, James and his Lanark raiders had finally captured Berwick, but an English relief army was reportedly being raised in York that would dwarf the host brought to Bannockburn. He had left young Walter Stewart in charge of his siege troops with orders to avoid giving battle until he returned.
He dismounted and made a move to go around Keith. Pushed back, he drove the cavalry officer against the wall with a steely glare of warning to unhand his arm. Keith decided not to test the threat, and stepped aside.
James lit a candle from the entry’s votive grille and walked through the sanctuary, which had been darkened with black bunting. Plates of rancid food littered the chapel, and it stank from rot and burning incense. As he neared the altar, he stepped on what appeared to be a corpse wrapped in a blanket. Lesions pocked its chest, whose hair had turned white with an oily sheen. Groaning, Robert looked up at him with eyebrows thinned and cheeks riddled with sores that seeped pus in his patchy beard. He crawled off into the shadows to hide. “Don’t touch me!”
James tore off the window coverings for light. “What has happened to you?”
Robert shielded his swollen eyes. “Malachy’s Curse. I’ll never be rid of it.”
He was exasperated to find that Robert was still bedeviled by his deceased grandfather’s tale of the traveling hermit who had cast vengeful incantations. “Where is that whoreson brother of yours?”
“Those Irish savages … cut off Eddie’s head. They sent it to London.”
He wasted no breath in mourning the greedy Edward, who had earned his fate with his unseemly lust for a crown. As he pulled Robert to his haunches, his hand brushed against carved ridges on the altar lintel. He brought the candle closer. “What in God’s name is this doing here?”
Robert pressed his splotched forehead against the Stone of Destiny’s cool surface. “I ordered the bishop to send it. If I sleep near it, a healing miracle may be granted me.”
He found a water basin and dipped a clothe in it to wash Robert’s face. “These sores are getting worse.”
“Did you come all the way up here just to mother me?”
He increased the rigor of his rubbing to punish him for the self-pity. “You have conjured a miracle, for certain. Thanks to your Irish adventuring, Caernervon and Lancaster have set aside their bickering to join forces. If they retake Berwick while I am here tending to your fragile wits, we’ll lose the Marches.”
Robert dismissed that possibility. “Caernervon would not have brought his queen consort and son to York if he planned to invade so soon.”
Galvanized by that news, James stood from his knee so swiftly that he overturned the basin. “Isabella is in the North?”
“Aye, Liz received a correspondence from her father last week. De Burgh mentioned hearing in court that Caernervon’s wife intends to spend the summer in Boroughbridge.”
“Heard from whom?"
“The English queen herself, of course.”
He lifted Robert to his feet with a surge of excitement. “Boroughbridge is only two leagues from York!”
Robert staggered before finding his balance, having not stood for days. “Who could blame her? London in the summer is a piss pot of humidity—”
“Damn it, Rob! Don’t you see what the French lass has done?”
Scratching at his own scalp, Robert stared blankly at him. “What in Finian’s name are you bleating about?”
James paced the flagstones in a tightening circle. “Isabella had to know that Liz’s father would gossip every detail of their conversation. I tell you there is more method than idle chatter in this.”
Robert blinked hard, trying to clear his head. “De Burgh has a loose tongue, but—”
“Isabella would never willingly travel to Yorkshire with Caernervon and Despenser, unless…”
Robert leaned in, waiting to hear the rest of the thought. “Unless what?”
“Unless she had a damn good reason.” James looked down at his muddied boots and became distracted by an army of ants scurrying along the walls toward a dollop of spilled honey. Intrigued, he traced their trail outside the nave.
Baffled by his interest in the ants, Robert followed him through the abbey’s door. Outside, the two men tracked the ants to a newly constructed mound of dirt near the gardens. Keith came to attention, surprised to find the king breaking his seclusion. The marishal and his troopers watched i
n confusion as Robert and James hovered on their hands and knees over the ant mound.
James scooped up half of the dirt pile and carried it several yards away. When he dropped it to the ground, the exiled ants abandoned their quest for the honey and retreated in panic to their queen, who remained in the original pile. He turned back to Robert with a grin of discovery. “The English queen is coming north for more than just a change of scenery.”
Robert suddenly understood what James was proposing, and he shook his head sternly. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Isabella has schemed this journey to be captured. If I go after her, Caernervon will abandon the Berwick siege and rush south to save her.”
Robert drew him away from the other men for privacy. “The Borders must be defended. I cannot send you off into the heart of England on some wild sortie for revenge.”
“Revenge? This has nothing to do with revenge. And you are the last one to lecture me about wild sorties!”
“The MacDuff lass is gone,” Robert said. “You have to chase the spell this memory of her has cast over you.”
He seethed at Robert’s patronizing tone. “Back from Ireland with your ears boxed because of your own chimera! And now you lecture me? Easy enough for you to advise temperance! You still have your woman!”
“There is nothing I can do to bring the Countess of Buchan back.”
“You can send me to Yorkshire to take Caernervon’s queen.”
Robert had hoped the passing of the years would soften James’s grief, but he now saw the flame that James held for Belle still burned white-hot. He had received reports that James had grown so reckless in his raids that some now feared he was intentionally courting death. James had never led him astray, true. Still, he questioned if he could trust his old friend’s judgment on such a risky stratagem. “If Edward leaves a garrison at York and comes at you from Berwick, you’ll be caught in a vise.”